Return To Vietnam

Since the 1980s, thousands of American and Australian veterans have returned to Việt Nam. This oral history tells their story.

As journalists, both had covered the Vietnam War until 1972. after twenty long years—of Stalinism, boat people, Hollywood heroics and French nostalgia—they decided it was time to go back. Vietnam, they believed, was not a story which "you could simply stop watching and switch off." They traveled from South to North, from Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) to Hanoi, exploring memories of the war and the contradictions of peace, looking and listening with a sensitivity and sense of solidarity all too rare in travel writing. The result is an extraordinary account of a country transformed and of a people, victors and victims together, betrayed on all sides, coming back to life. In Hanoi they find none of the grim austerity imagined by foreigners, but rather a city of beauty now 'opening' to capitalism partly thanks to the experiences and money orders of workers sent in their thousands to Poland of the GDR. At Khe Sanh, on the bloodiest battlefield of the war, children dig for shrapnel to sell for a cent a kilo; lovers stroll on the beach at De Nang, where the first US troops landed. Loudspeakers in the street still broadcast a litany of production figures, but they are drowned out by Paul Anka and the Everly Brothers. Saigon, the author discover, has easily triumphed over Stalin's murderous economic planning. But it may face a tougher adversary in capitalism, whose grim 'post-communist' program can be found in a single neon sign: "Kenwood-HiFi-Stereo-Night-Club-Karaoke-VIP-Room-Discotheque-Saigon-Pub-Health-Centre-Coffee-Shop." As rich in political perceptions as it is in memorable images, Return to Vietnam shatters the myths about a country which the West fought over, flattened and forgot.

Controversial Vietnam war hero and author of Under Fire, Oliver North returns to Vietnam in an attempt to resolve his own sense of conflict about the war. North's deeply moving narrative chronicles an unforgettable journey to learn if it's possible for something good to come from a nation's epic tragedy.

How the startling image of an anti-war protested spitting on a uniformed veteran misrepresented the narrative of Vietnam War political debate One of the most resilient images of the Vietnam era is that of the anti-war protester — often a woman — spitting on the uniformed veteran just off the plane. The lingering potency of this icon was evident during the Gulf War, when war supporters invoked it to discredit their opposition. In this startling book, Jerry Lembcke demonstrates that not a single incident of this sort has been convincingly documented. Rather, the anti-war Left saw in veterans a natural ally, and the relationship between anti-war forces and most veterans was defined by mutual support. Indeed one soldier wrote angrily to Vice President Spiro Agnew that the only Americans who seemed concerned about the soldier's welfare were the anti-war activists. While the veterans were sometimes made to feel uncomfortable about their service, this sense of unease was, Lembcke argues, more often rooted in the political practices of the Right. Tracing a range of conflicts in the twentieth century, the book illustrates how regimes engaged in unpopular conflicts often vilify their domestic opponents for "stabbing the boys in the back." Concluding with an account of the powerful role played by Hollywood in cementing the myth of the betrayed veteran through such films as Coming Home, Taxi Driver, and Rambo, Jerry Lembcke's book stands as one of the most important, original, and controversial works of cultural history in recent years.

Vietnam veterans recount what happened to them upon their return to the U.S.

Two wartime correspondents return to Vietnam after twenty years to observe the changes in the country and people.

Based on classified documents and first-person interviews, a startling history of the American war on Vietnamese civilians The American Empire Project Winner of the Ridenhour Prize for Reportorial Distinction Americans have long been taught that events such as the notorious My Lai massacre were isolated incidents in the Vietnam War, carried out by just a few "bad apples." But as award-winning journalist and historian Nick Turse demonstrates in this groundbreaking investigation, violence against Vietnamese noncombatants was not at all exceptional during the conflict. Rather, it was pervasive and systematic, the predictable consequence of official orders to "kill anything that moves." Drawing on more than a decade of research into secret Pentagon archives and extensive interviews with American veterans and Vietnamese survivors, Turse reveals for the first time the workings of a military machine that resulted in millions of innocent civilians killed and wounded-what one soldier called "a My Lai a month." Devastating and definitive, Kill Anything That Moves finally brings us face-to-face with the truth of a war that haunts America to this day.

The legacy and memory of wartime South Vietnam through the eyes of Vietnamese refugees In 1975, South Vietnam fell to communism, marking a stunning conclusion to the Vietnam War. Although this former ally of the United States has vanished from the world map, Long T. Bui maintains that its memory endures for refugees with a strong attachment to this ghost country. Blending ethnography with oral history, archival research, and cultural analysis, Returns of War considers Returns of War argues that Vietnamization--as Richard Nixon termed it in 1969--and the end of South Vietnam signals more than an example of flawed American military strategy, but a larger allegory of power, providing cover for U.S. imperial losses while denoting the inability of the (South) Vietnamese and other colonized nations to become independent, modern liberal subjects. Bui argues that the collapse of South Vietnam under Vietnamization complicates the already difficult memory of the Vietnam War, pushing for a critical understanding of South Vietnamese agency beyond their status as the war’s ultimate “losers.” Examining the lasting impact of Cold War military policy and culture upon the “Vietnamized” afterlife of war, this book weaves questions of national identity, sovereignty, and self-determination to consider the generative possibilities of theorizing South Vietnam as an incomplete, ongoing search for political and personal freedom.